Sir Joshua Reynolds, leading portrait painter and founding President of the Royal Academy, was born 300 years ago. He was the most influential British artist for over a century.
Turner
From Bellini in 1496, through Canaletto, to JMW Turner in 1840, views of Piazza San Marco in Venice.
Queen Penelope and their son Telemachus were awaiting the return of Odysseus, whose ships ended up off the island of the Cyclops.
Optical principles are straightforward, but can become extremely complex in practice. Examples from Jan van Eyck to Hodler and Signac.
Paintings by JMW Turner, Clarkson Stanfield, William Dyce, John Brett, Whistler, Berthe Morisot and others.
How to paint a landscape with faithful and coherent cast shadows, why most painters don’t do so, and a few get it wrong.
Byron, no stranger to forbidden love, swam across the Dardanelles in 1810, retracing the strokes of the legendary Leander who died trying to reach his lover Hero.
Explaining shade, attached and cast shadows seen in paintings. While the first two have been generally painted faithfully, cast shadows are more complicated.
A visit to Rome, in the paintings of Valenciennes, Turner, Paul Bril, Gérôme, and others, and a little history of landscape painting.
Asphalt has been claimed to be responsible for the slow destruction and loss of many paintings, from the ‘Raft of the Medusa’ on. The evidence is tenuous.
The Eclectic Light Company 